Going into the crisis, "we set the company up to do acquisitions but we didn't have the rolodex" of bankers, Corbett said. "A part of our strategy in bringing the correspondent unit on was to get to know downstream banks better."

And Corbett has a knack for getting to know people. He was 16 years old when he met Pinner through church. The connection didn't pay off immediately—as a college student at Bob Jones University, the first time Corbett tried to get a summer job with First Union, where Pinner was then the market president in Winter Haven, Corbett didn't make the cut and joined a carnival instead. The following summer, he tried again and landed a job with First Union as a teller.

In 1990, Pinner sent Corbett through the bank's training program in Charlotte and then Tampa, and Corbett became a commercial banker under Pinner.

"Ernie took chance on me and he's taken a chance on me ever since," Corbett says.

A pivotal moment came in 1999, when Pinner left First Union and suggested that Corbett come with him to start a bank.

Both men were wary of the signals around them at First Union. A round of layoffs had begun, and the two men shared expectations that the corporate culture would become more centralized—sure enough, the company eventually would merge with Wachovia.

"He knew I was frustrated, and really we were looking for the next challenge in life," says Corbett, who worked at First Union for 10 years. "Over a series of lunches, we talked each other into it."

Even after Pinner and Corbett agreed to start CenterState, and had raised $10 million in capital, Corbett's excitement over the new endeavor remained tinged with terror. On the day CenterState opened, "Ernie and I and seven employees opened the door and nobody was there," Corbett says. "I thought, 'Oh gosh, we made the worst mistake of our entire lives.'"

But the customers eventually came, as did the acquisitions.

CenterState purposefully ran separate charters to give market presidents and boards the autonomy to run their own banks. But the strategy broke down in 2008, when management wanted to buy failed banks but found that its capital was tied up across five separate subsidiaries. So CenterState became the first bank in Florida to accept Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, taking $28 million.

"Philosophically and morally, we were totally against that level of government involvement," Corbett says. "But we knew that if you don't participate, you're at a competitive disadvantage."

CenterState later became the first Florida bank to pay off TARP when it raised $86 million in capital in 2009, a time when most Florida banks wouldn't touch the markets for fear of dilution.

A year later, the company had acquired three failed banks and raised another $35 million in capital for more acquisitions.

But trouble arose when the company simultaneously tried to merge the three acquisitions, along with three existing subsidiaries, onto a new platform.

"If I had to point to a low point in all of this, the crucible of the whole management team was in Christmas 2010," says Corbett. While the integration of the existing subsidiaries had been planned, "you don't get to plan out FDIC deals. We didn't have any control of the timing."

CenterState eventually brought an information technology team in-house from a core processing company to convert all of its banks to a larger platform that could handle more deals. After two years, every acquisition has been fully converted.

Despite the growth pangs, Corbett is thankful that CenterState has taken on as many banks as it has.

"You almost have to do four or more to learn how to integrate them," he says. "You get better as you go and now we're at the point where we haven't done anything in nine months, and I think people get a little itchy."

People also are getting itchy about efficiency, with Wall Street pressuring management to deliver more of it.

"Now that they've done all [this], they need to make it work," says Michael Rose, an analyst with Raymond James. "In a depressed market where there's not a ton of growth at this point, investors will be asking: Can you drive greater efficiency and better profitability?"

CenterState has turned a profit and has used its bargain purchase gains to clear out bad loans. The company posted net income of $2.7 million in the third quarter of this year, versus a net loss of $2 million in the year-ago quarter.

Nonperforming assets dropped in half to $35.6 million, or 1.5 percent of total assets. But CenterState's efficiency ratio ballooned above 80 percent this year, with the acquisitions of so many banks and branches.

CenterState has spent the last two quarters working down the efficiency ratio by consolidating 20 branches and overall expenses. It now stands at 72 percent excluding credit costs.

Says Corbett, "I want to march into the mid-60s and keep going."

Management also is promising investors that the company, with 55 branches, will grow to $5 billion in assets in the next three years within its existing Florida footprint. Given the broader market conditions, some analysts are skeptical. But CenterState's competitors are not.

Corbett "has put together a talented team," says John Burden, president of Old Florida National Bank in Orlando, "and it's going to prove itself out."

Expect banks to pull back on energy lending in the near term, as regulators step up their scrutiny of oil loans and bankers approach the business with a "different attitude," says Mariner Kemper, chairman and chief executive at UMB Financial in Kansas City, Mo.

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